I-T dept questions alleged aide of Mukhtar Ansari in benami assets case

Lucknow: The Income-Tax department is questioning an alleged associate of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari in connection with its ongoing investigation against the former legislator related to the possession of alleged benami assets, official sources said on Thursday.

The anti-benami assets unit of the I-T department based here is recording the statement of Ganesh Dutt Mishra after the Uttar Pradesh Police apprehended him from Ghazipur and handed him over to the tax sleuths, they said.

Mishra, 56, was detained by the Ghazipur Police, on the directions of the tax department, on June 20.

The Income Tax department, according to the sources, will record his statement with regard to the alleged benami assets of Ansari and will subsequently allow him to leave.

The department's benami assets investigation unit in Lucknow had attached a property, located at 'Mauja Kapurpur NZA under Sadar Tehsil' in the said district, after a provisional order was issued by it in April under the provisions of the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act of 2016.

The asset, a land bearing an estimated market value of about Rs 12 crore, was impounded by the tax department in May.

As per the I-T order, the benamidar (in whose name a benami property is standing) in this case was identified as Mishra, an alleged associate and neighbour of Ansari, while the "beneficial owner" was Ansari.

Benami means 'no name' or 'without name' and such properties are those in which the real beneficiary is not the one in whose name the property has been purchased.

The attachment of this land parcel in Ghazipur is part of a "comprehensive" action undertaken by the tax department against Ansari and his associates under an operation codenamed "panther".

Income Tax department sources had earlier said they are working to attach about 22 more alleged benami properties of Ansari, which are estimated to be having a market value of over Rs 100 crore.

Ansari faces 61 criminal cases in different states of which he has now been convicted in six.

A Varanasi court early this month sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of a Congress leader's brother, Awadhesh Rai, more than 30 years ago.

In April, he was sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court in Ghazipur under the Gangsters Act.